He also used to complain that as his eyesight wasn’t so good the last couple of years and that my writing was too small (after he once described it as looking like “spider spit” I started writing larger and larger…) and he had to hunt out his 4×5 loupe before he could read it and reply. He also managed to give me advice about looking after the couple of apple trees I have in my garden.

I only knew him, mainly at a distance, over the last 3 years or so, but I’m going to miss him.

For me he always was a kind of mythic, far away figure, until I began to become more and more interested in Japanese photography. Soon I learnt that he organized the first group exhibition on contemporary Japanese photography outside Japan and that he was the one (together with Shôji Yamagishi) who set the foundation with the selection of photographers and through his essay for the reception and perception of Japanese photography in the West. But it seems that the exhibition did not had an immediate impact, since it took many years until others really realized the value of the visual treasure he presented in the West for the first time.

Ferdinand

PS: I wrote a little bit more about John Szarkowski’s seminal exhibition “New Japanese Photography” in my blog at http://www.japan-photo.info

This was maybe the best thing about John’s stories to me a 23 year old photographer a the time—seeing him remember the first time he saw something like a Baltz photograph, and understanding now, how important that moment was.

He said that he told the receptionist to let him know when the photographer came in, he wanted to meet him. Then he said that when he heard Baltz was there he was a bit nervous, excited by the photographs. He introduced himself to Baltz, said the work was quite good. He said, “It’s, it’s, it’s almost…boring.”

“OH!” boomed John, as he slapped his forehead with his hand and smiled, and said something like, “I knew that hadn’t come out right. But they REALLY were.”

I’ll always remember John emphasizing a point by slapping both hands on the table in front of him. This was the only time I saw the forehead slap.

John Szarkowski by Elliott Erwitt, 1988

More from Richard Lacayo, Mark Feeney, and Mary Rourke.

VERLYN KLINKENBORG writes in the NY Times:

It’s worth remembering how much Wisconsin there was in the voice of John Szarkowski, who died on Saturday at age 81. His reputation would almost make you doubt what you were hearing. He was, after all, the curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art for 29 years, beginning in 1962. The exhibitions he mounted and the books he wrote quite simply gave documentary photography a place in the world of art. And yet there was that broad Wisconsin in his speech, reminding his auditors that if they could hear the curatorial pulpit in his words they could also hear the sound of a very different place.

I’m struck now by the essential modesty of that other place — the common-sensical view Mr. Szarkowski took of his curatorial work and his work as a photographer. What comes to mind, especially, is one of his photographs called “Mr. Anderson and Son, Near Sandstone, Minnesota, 1957.” It is the picture of a farmer and his son standing against the backdrop of an empty wooden corncrib. There is in both faces a wry, inquisitive look, almost humorous in the father’s face, more trusting in the son’s. The picture embodies the aesthetic Mr. Szarkowski found in the photographers he championed — the aesthetic of merely noticing.

Mr. Szarkowski never pretended that photography changed because of his attention. He pretended that he was just paying attention to what should have been obvious to almost anyone. What he demonstrated, in fact, was the very thing that good curators are able to do. He remained himself, and yet he was changed by what he saw and showed us how to be changed, too.

“Bladen?”, he said.
“It’s Baden”, I mumbled.
“Ah, Baden. I’m John Szarkowski.”
“I know.”
“You do? OK, well, let’s go into my office.”

We sat down across from each other and he, I think, began to tell me how much the department enjoyed looking at my work. I say ‘I think’, because I was terribly nervous and, even though I could hear his words, their meaning didn’t register. He began to refer to specific images in my portfolio, but his descriptions sounded entirely unfamiliar. Before long, I was convinced that he had confused my work with someone else’s.

“I think you’ve made a mistake,” I finally blurted out, ” I don’t think you’re talking about my pictures.”

Szarkowski paused. “Well, maybe you’re right. Why don’t we bring them in and take a look?”

‘Ain’t this the story of my life,’ I’m now thinking. ‘The only reason I get an audience with this guy is because he thinks I’m someone else…’

So they bring in a Fiberbilt case full of photos and, lo and behold, they turn out to be mine.
I left the museum that day with one less photograph in my portfolio, and the promise of a check for $125. Not a lot of money for a photograph, even in 1983, but it gave me a sense of confidence that I have rarely, if ever, felt since.

The Idea of John Szarkowski, to appropriate a phrase, may have fallen out of grace in the past decade or two; his writings, according to several schools of thought, smack of an old-fashioned patriarchy. While this view is not entirely unjustified, I continue to believe that no one has written more clearly, more compellingly and more beautifully about photographs and photography. In The Photographer’s Eye, Looking at Photographs and many of the other books in what is practically a bottomless bibliography, John Szarkowski had the ability to illuminate truth, seemingly effortlessly, with simplicity, elegance and clarity.